Critic Reviews

Tomb Raider is a brilliant game on the XBox 360 and the developers have successfully rebooted the franchise for the 21st century with next-generation graphics and gameplay. Best of all, the developers pay homage to the original game that started it all but flesh out the character of Lara Croft to create this almost life-like person that you can really relate to. I for one hope that Crystal Dynamics will continue to build other Tomb Raider games with their new Crystal Engine as this game was brilliantly good and extremely fun to play!

Like the Uncharted series, Tomb Raider serves up a generous share of edge-of-your-seat quick-action scenes that will leave you breathless. Building on the lessons of all its predecessors, Tomb Raider is a masterpiece that gives this franchise a new lease on life.

Tomb Raider is back and it is about time. This is a superlative title which deserves to be on anyone's shelf and has made Tomb Raider cool again. The pacing and the exploration means that it isn't over in a short while and will last 10 to 12 hours if you take your time on the main story, much longer if you spend a lot of time levelling up and using every bit of salvage you can find. This is the best iteration of Tomb Raider yet and we can't wait to see what CD do for the sequel.

Tomb Raider is well-written, sympathetic, exciting, beautiful and just incredibly well-made. The single-player rarely makes a mis-step, and though Lara's quick transformation into a hardened killer seems at odds with the narrative at first, the game quickly moves past it. It is a superb action game that brings a new emotional dimension to one of gaming's most enduring icons, and repositions her alongside Nathan Drake at the top of gaming's action-hero heirarchy.

After nearly two decades, Crystal Dynamics finally gets it right. Tomb Raider is an action-packed thrill ride full of amazing set-pieces, sharp writing, a fun science fiction story and tons of enemies to gun down. Tomb Raider is a game worthy of the Croft name!

While it will, more than likely, be overtaken by other hotly anticipated titles over the rest of 2013, at this point, Tomb Raider is an early contender for Game of the Year. This reboot of a popular, well-known franchise went through several bumps and delays in development, but the end result is a very good product. Following a young Lara Croft as she tries to survive while exploring a dark and dangerous island is a thrilling experience, guaranteed to get your adrenaline racing. Fans of both the original games and similar franchises like Uncharted will find a lot to like here. Pick this one up, and you may not put it down again until you emerge at the end of the game, bruised, bleeding, and exhausted, but ultimately triumphant.

Dramatic reinventions of a much loved series are nearly always polarizing and the same rings true for Tomb Raider, which loses or overhauls much of the elements of the earlier games, making for a game that some will find to be too much lacking in the series fundamentals to impress. Still, as a reboot the game is an excellent, well made action adventure that takes the series and its heroine in an exciting and refreshingly new direction.

Tomb Raider takes everything you think you know about one of gaming’s best known franchises, and reinvents it from the ground up, but still retains enough of a lingering sense of heritage to stay relevant to the series. This isn’t a story about the Lara Croft you’ve already met: this is the tale of how she came to be. It’s both wonderful heartbreak and an exciting new beginning.

Tomb Raider could so easily have gone wrong, and its opening gambit looks like it's heading down a most erroneous path. It starts off with some ambushing QTEs and absolutely pummels Lara Croft into the dirt to such a degree, you'd almost suspect the developers were getting off on it. This first impression is an awkward obfuscation, however, one that soon erodes to reveal a savvy, thoughtful, and above all, immensely enjoyable game. In fact, I'm happy to go on record as saying this is the best Tomb Raider game I've played. Tightly produced, competent in both its puzzling and its combat, this is one reboot that manages to be unequivocally superior to its predecessors.

2013 looks to be a good year for us gamers. We’ve got God of War: Ascension, Injustice: Gods Among Us, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, and Grand Theft Auto V to name a few, and I can say, Tomb Raider has set the standard in Q1. An extremely well made single player campaign paired with a fun and rewarding multiplayer game has kicked the year off right. If you’re a Tomb Raider fan, or someone who loves good adventure games, this is a mandatory pickup, you can’t afford to miss Tomb Raider.

Crystal Dynamics promoted Tomb Raider with the slogan "A Survivor is Born" to accentuate the rebooted and improved approach to a decades-old series, but from an industry standpoint, we can alter that slogan to "A Contender is Born". It's a five-star story mode bleeding like our young Lara with obvious commitment from the studio behind the game. The two- or three-star online mode dampers the final score of the game but there's little to be ashamed of in Lara's origin story. Consistently engaging and polished gameplay supplements an enthralling story, and despite the facelift, it all still feels like a part of the series. For a console generation soon to be replaced, Tomb Raider will be remembered as one of the swan songs of the Xbox 360 and a must-play for pretty much anyone.

Tomb Raider delivers a slick, fun time with plenty of collectibles, great action, and an excellent main character. It's not exactly what those of us who played the original might have been expecting in a reboot, what with third-person cover shooting and linear platform action dominating the time spent playing. Rather than being in confident control of her adventure, Lara starts out fragile and desperately trying to survive, and that theme manages to permeate throughout the entire game. It works, but it's going to wear thin quickly if Crystal Dynamics relies on it for too long, so I hope that they expand things out and give Lara her confidence back for the next game. Tomb Raider might not be what we expected and the online play is a bust, but this is still a wonderful solo game that really rounds out the excellent selection of new titles we're seeing for a month like March.

There is a platform here for Crystal Dynamics to take Lara’s shenanigans to a new level, but a reliance on fairly bog standard shooter mechanics just doesn’t do the franchise any justice and as a result, means Tomb Raider falls short of being a truly great game. Still ounces of fun, but you can’t help but think, “what could have been?”

There is a platform here for Crystal Dynamics to take Lara’s shenanigans to a new level, but a reliance on fairly bog standard shooter mechanics just doesn’t do the franchise any justice and as a result, means Tomb Raider falls short of being a truly great game. Still ounces of fun, but you can’t help but think, “what could have been?”

I thought about whether this game would stand out in the crowd without the Tomb Raider or Lara Croft name attached, and I felt like it’d be something that people would enjoy for the moment, and then forget about a few months down the line. Again, there’s some solid foundations being laid here, and I think this style of gameplay fits the license well. But there really needs to be a bit more innovation, challenge, and charm introduced if you want to sell me on the sequel.

Instead we have tedious gunfights, simplistic puzzles, directives to gather nine mushrooms, and tombs full of relics we never see. Tomb Raider is a fine game, but something essential feels like it has been left out. Lara seems to have found the map, but missed the treasure.

Even though Tomb Raider fails to connect you with the main heroine, you will find yourself enjoying the game regardless. That’s a big nod to the game’s design, as it does a great job of making you continue on despite this amazing flaw. Tomb Raider delivers with heart pounding action sequences and a very rewarding gaming experience. It’s is a great game that, if you can get past the cry baby antics of the weak main character, gives you one hell of a ride. I definitely look forward to a sequel, and I hope that in future installments they try harder to have Lara grow as a character.

Tomb Raider is the sort of game that’s easy to love if you weren’t terribly interested in the franchise anymore and have no expectations, as it’s an absolutely fantastic experience mechanically and artistically, but it in no way pays off its developmental hype and shares only its name with its predecessors.

Tomb Raider is sure to please many people, just as sure as it is to piss many others off. The story is a joke, and one that could potentially permanently damage Lara Croft’s reputation in the gaming industry. Bad writing moves it away from a survival story and turns it into the story about how one woman becomes a mass murderer. However, it looks, sounds, and plays fantastic. I had a lot of fun with the game, and would be more than willing to play a potential sequel. If Crystal Dynamics can go out there and hire better writers, this could turn into a hell of a new chapter for the series.